Wednesday, August 31, 2005

We are Just Getting Started

As the body count from the New Orleans devastation rises, and I am not sure if we will ever know the real casualties, we have to ask ourselves who is responsible for the devastation.

And I don't mean god.

I have posted several articles here, showing that there has been a level of awareness that hurricane seasons were only going to get worse primarily due to global warming. I have also posted several articles here that dealt with the Bush administrations contempt and outright sabotage of scientific work that the neocons did not want publicly known. The Guardian published another one yesterday.

Rigorous Intuition posted some interesting links about this disaster. This one was particularly troubling, showing that work on the levees was drastically cut back so that funding for the war in Iraq could continue.

[...] Nagin said the sandbagging was scheduled for midday, but the Blackhawk helicopters needed to help did not show up. He said the sandbags were ready and all the helicopter had to do was “show up.” [...]

We also have the Pentagon Coordinating Katrina Response, martial law has been declared. There are gas shortages. Perhaps thousands of people will default on their home loans. Loans for homes that are now destroyed.

The American Civil Liberties Union today released an FBI document that designates a Michigan-based peace group and an affirmative action advocacy group as potentially “involved in terrorist activities,” RAW STORY has learned. The ACLU release follows. [...] [via Dialogic]

In the days after federal agents arrested five residents of Lodi in a terror investigation in June, a clean-cut young man who had befriended the suspects and had spent nights at their homes vanished.

He hasn't been seen in town since, and now members of Lodi's Muslim community suspect they know why: The man, who called himself Nasim Khan, was a government mole, they believe, an informer whose surreptitious tape recordings of one of the suspects are at the heart of the federal probe.

Community members said Khan, who is in his early 30s, sometimes spoke of “jihad” in what they now believe was an attempt to get others to express radical sentiments. [...] [via Signs of the Times]

Is global warming making hurricanes more ferocious? New research suggests the answer is yes. Scientists call the findings both surprising and “alarming” because they suggest global warming is influencing storms now - rather than in the distant future. [...]

Emanuel analyzed records of storm measurements made by aircraft and satellites since the 1950s. He found the amount of energy released in these storms in both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific oceans has increased, especially since the mid-1970s.

In the Atlantic, the sea surface temperatures show a pronounced upward trend. The same is true in the North Pacific, though the data there is more variable, he said. [...]

When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans on Monday, it could turn one of America's most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries. [...]

Reality is not like it used to be, or at least what we thought it was like. We have gone through the looking glass, and I'm not so sure there is any getting back.

A bit of hyperbole perhaps, but I listen to friends and acquaintances who refuse to adjust their perceptions of what kind of world we live in now. They talk about saving up for down payments, making mild career adjustments, watching television...

Now is the time to see reality. It was split wide open for us to examine after 9/11, disgorging its coffins, filth, and toxic, sewage infected waste water.

From that day forward, you had to really fight to believe in a benevolent government who is looking out for your interest, or at the very least a government that was going to let you pass under the radar due to your insignificance. Not too insignificant mind you, their subconscious must reason, just a decent life with a bit of fun now and then.

Now we are faced with a hateful, destructive government and a planet that seems bent on hitting the reset button. Some of us attempt to pretend that reality will even out somehow. It will go back to that delicate balance, where bad things happen, but not predominately to me.

Now is not the time to be ignorant of entropy. Once the scale is tipped too far, it is a long time before balance is restored.

Hope lies in the individual taking responsibility, as an individual, and paying attention.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Satan's Hurricanes

Noted Climatologist Pat Robertson said at a recent Intelligent Design Weather Symposium that he believes that Florida's hurricane problems are due to the devil. [...]

Personally, I think we have brought all these weather changes on ourselves due to frustrated creativity, putting up with monotonous jobs, believing in filthy lies, and looking for a saviour outside of ourselves due to laziness, but what do I know.

There are so many contributors and variables with climate change. I think we just have to get used to the idea that the surface of this planet has never been a stable place to live. I have mentioned this before, but there is another article about that devilish cosmic dust that can change a climate.

We were warned back in May that hurricane seasons were only going to get worse:

TAMPA, Fla. - With the onset of the 2005 hurricane season little more than two weeks away, meteorologists on Friday warned that conditions in the Atlantic Ocean again were ripe for spawning tropical storms that could slam into Florida or other parts of the Eastern U.S. or Gulf coast with potentially devastating and deadly consequences.

Last season, Florida was hit by four hurricanes in six weeks, an unprecedented succession of natural disasters in the state that was blamed for 123 deaths and more than $42 billion in property damage. Although predicting where and when storms will make landfall is impossible, forecasters attending Florida's 19th annual Governor's Hurricane Conference agreed that the Atlantic Ocean was in the throes of an active period that could last another two decades or more.

“We're in a new era now, and we're going to see a lot more major storms,” said William Gray, a professor in Colorado State University's department of atmospheric science, who issues a much-awaited yearly prediction of hurricane activity. [...]

More Surveillance for Less Safety

Officials unveiled the high-tech future of transit security in New York City today: an ambitious plan to saturate the subways with 1,000 video cameras and 3,000 motion sensors and to enable cellphone service in 277 underground stations - but not in moving cars - for the first time. [...] [via Cryptogen]

I expect these cameras to conveniently malfunction when the police decide to shoot a supposed terrorist in the head, just like in London.

Ooh, that sounds a bit cynical, doesn't it?

Actually, I am rather outraged as more and more comes to light about the recent shooting. Xymphora has been doing a good job keeping up with the story, such as Unbelievable tales from London.

The more I hear, the more this murder sounds like a scare tactic on us all. Just like we were scared into perpetual war for peace.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Murder

Murdered in Afghanistan? tells a rather believable story that Juan Torres, Jr may have been murdered. He was stationed in Afghanistan and was disgusted with the drug trade conducted by the US Army stationed there. He was so distraught that he felt he had to do something about it, shortly thereafter he was found dead in the shower with a bullet wound to the head.

[...] U.S.-backed warlords who control most of Afghanistan's countryside with private armies continue to enrich themselves with opium profits while the U.S. looks the other way. Far from a fledgling “democracy,” U.S.-occupied Afghanistan is an experiment in barbarism. [...]

I am reminded of the strange deaths surrounding Jessica Lynch's “rescuers”. The connections are made in my brain due to the ambiguity and the small clues that just don't completely add up. The official explanation could be the right one, but in both cases the Bush Regime has reasons to prefer these people dead.

We have seen time and time again that the neocons don't support our troops. They leave that job to the magnetic ribbons. They are certainly killing them, and it is not such a stretch they would have someone pull the trigger directly.

Around the time that Jessica denounced the Pentagon for using her for propaganda, and it was revealed that the PR specialist handling Lynch propaganda was the same person who promoted the phony Gulf War incubator story, I discovered the strange deaths:

Josh Speer drove his car off the road, on Hwy 11, near his home in South Carolina. In broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon.

Sok Khah Ung was at a family barbecue in Long Beach, California and was gunned down in drive by shooting.

David M. Tapper was shot in the back after being sent to the front lines of Afghanistan. He was transfered to Afghanistan shortly after the rescue.

Kyle Edward Williams startled someone who was breaking into his jeep, shot at them, and then supposedly shot himself afterwards. He didn't leave a note, and was on his way home to his family.

Bush Running Scared, Flees to the Mountains

Bush, or his handlers, are so scared of Cindy that they are sending him off to some remote retreat for the wealthy in Idaho. How much vacation does this man need? It is not as if he does anything in the White House - except vent his mad ravings on the underlings.

Now read about the awful slander the right has thrown at Cindy Sheehan. They are about as inspired as a chimp throwing its feces.

[...] What explains these ferocious and slanderous attacks? Cindy is but one lone woman. Unlike President Bush, she does not claim to speak or act on behalf of 275,000,000 people, but only for herself. Relatives of other dead soldiers have criticized this woman, saying “she doesn’t speak for us.” But I am unaware of any statement made by Cindy purporting to speak for anyone but herself. She only seeks an answer to her personal question: “why did my son die?”

Cindy Sheehan does constitute a threat, not to America, but to the totalitarian forces that insist on crushing the spirit of peace and liberty in order that they might dominate the American people. History is awash with examples of men and women eagerly cooperating with those who would subjugate and destroy them. As Pastor Niemoller’s words so eloquently remind us, cristalnacht was neither the first nor last instance of people turning upon – rather than coming to the defense of – their neighbors when under attack by the state. [...]

By now, most have heard that the mentally unstable Pat Robertson is calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. All he has to do is say that Venezuela is a source of Islamic extremism, and his soulless minions believe. Never mind that Muslims make up less than 2 percent of the population.

We also have the fact that the U.S. says Terrorists May Pose As Vagrants. Now all those tossed out on their ear due to Bush's insane economic policies can be rounded up and placed in interment camps. People will cheer - until they can no longer make their house payments.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The military’s next generation of airborne drones won’t be just small and silent – they’ll also dive between buildings, zoom under overpasses and land on apartment balconies. [...]

Can you feel the net tightening?

I cannot find the article on the internet, but I did see an article in the newspaper today that those cave dwelling Muslim insurgents have plans to target satellites and knock out everyone's communication systems.

I am not making this up. They actually want us to believe that alQaeda can knock out a satellite. The psychopathic control freaks are so afraid of people like Cindy, that they plan on cutting us all off from the internet and other means of communication. After the Bush Reich flips some switch or other, putting a stop to all of us networking and sharing information, they will announce that it is al Qaeda's fault.

Yes, there will be plenty of people who will believe them.

Most of us did not speak up for those so maligned by this crazy rhetoric, and when we are disappeared just exactly who is going to speak up for us?

I think that the neocons wanted all those stories of torture to be leaked. They want to scare us. They are now working very hard on Cindy to scare us from speaking up.

It seems evident that we should begin wearing such titles as “crackpot,” “America hater,” “tragedy slut,” “media whore,” as badges of honor. (Just a few of the names leveled at Cindy.)

Never did I think that I would see such mass hysteria and insanity blanket the US.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Like a Speeding Train

I really do not care for the linear flow of time. It breezes by so quickly, and before you know it chunks of life have sped away. I got caught up in all kinds of other issues and the blog has suffered.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Cindy Sheehan

I recommend the article Painting Cindy by the artist and the author of the article Robert Shetterly.

And then mosey over and read about parents who are quite happy to sacrifice their children to Bush's angry and jealous god, thank you: Anti-War Mom Opposition Mounting.

A good many US citizens love a good blood sacrifice, it seems. And they get angry when you oppose any sort of killing, and spout of drivel like, “protesting emboldens the enemy.”

If it wasn't for voices like Cindy's the current American main stream rhetoric would be overwhelmed with people thinking that a voice different than theirs is treason. These people are feeling truly threatened by her bravery.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Not so Greenland part 3

Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. [...]

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

More Testing Needed

At the bottom of the hour on today's Special Report 8/8/05, Shep Smith gave his usual sneak preview of Fox Report. Among the stories mentioned was a Homeland Security“ segment,

in which Smith read ”Scientists testing the wind in New York City in hopes of saving lives should the unthinkable ever happen. They released colorless, harmless gas around the Big Apple today. The goal: see how a chemical or biological weapon might sweep through the city, and figure out the best way to get people out.“

Comment: While viewers are being terrorized by the thought of such an attack, Fox reassures them that the government is working hard to take care of them when it happens. What a powerful soundbite!

Regular Fox viewers don't even realized how badly they're yanked, from resenting the government to absolutely trusting it and back again.

Since most of us have no memory, and the media can't be bothered to mention the past we don't remember all these tests have already been done. And the stuff they tested with were not always harmless, inert agents.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Not so Greenland part 2

The Antarctic Peninsula is undergoing greater warming than almost anywhere on Earth, a condition perhaps associated with human-induced greenhouse effects.

According to the cover article published in the August 4 issue of the journal Nature, the spectacular collapse of the Antarctica's Larson B Ice Shelf, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, is unprecedented during the past 10,000 years. [...]

These are certainly exciting times, but the real fun part of this topic:

[...] Looking at the ice cores, however, scientists were shocked to discover that the transitions from ice age-like weather to contemporary-type weather usually took only two or three years. Something was flipping the weather of the planet back and forth with a rapidity that was startling.

It turns out that the ice age versus temperate weather patterns weren't part of a smooth and linear process, like a dimmer slider for an overhead light bulb. They are part of a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage almost overnight. [...]

We Are Such Suckers

[...] A study on the power of suggestion found that people could be falsely persuaded that they had once become sick eating strawberry ice cream as children -- and they later said they would avoid this food. [...]

What the researchers did was gather data from the subject regarding personality and childhood experiences, then told the subject that they fed the data into a “very smart computer”.

“Then you add in (that) you got sick on strawberry ice cream. You want them to think about the getting sick aspect of the experience,” Loftus said.

Then the volunteers were asked to describe what may have happened -- for instance, eating strawberry ice cream at a birthday party and becoming ill.

“Most of our subjects came up with a belief that this had happened as opposed to developing an actual memory,” Loftus said.

And it worked:

Up to 40 percent of the students fell for it, and most of them lowered their preference for strawberry ice cream on a later questionnaire, Loftus and colleagues reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]

[...] “We can easily distort memories for the details of an event that you did experience,” says Loftus. “And we can also go so far as to plant entirely false memories - we call them rich false memories because they are so detailed and so big.”

She has persuaded people to adopt false but plausible memories - for instance, that at the age of five or six they had the distressing experience of being lost in a shopping mall - as well as implausible ones: memories of witnessing demonic possession, or an encounter with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers character, and as the Los Angeles Times put it earlier this year, “The wascally Warner Bros. Wabbit would be awwested on sight”, at Disney. [...]

I think it is safer to assume I can be duped, that I have been duped, and that right now I have some belief in something or other that does not correspond to reality. My job is to work toward an objective understanding.

Only the arrogant can say with one hundred percent self-assurance that they are too smart to be taken in by a well told lie.

It doesn't even have to be well told. Witness the legion of believers in the official story of 9/11. Although, that belief is steadily falling apart:

It might sound preposterous, like astrology, to suggest that galactic events help determine when North America is or isn't buried under immense sheets of ice taller than skyscrapers.

But new research suggests that the coming and going of major ice ages might result partly from our solar system's passage through immense, snakelike clouds of exploding stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Resembling the curved contrails of a whirling Fourth of July pinwheel, the Milky Way's spiral arms are clouds of stars rich in supernovas, or exploding stars. Supernovas emit showers of charged particles called cosmic rays.

Theorists have proposed that when our solar system passes through a spiral arm, the cosmic rays fall to Earth and knock electrons off atoms in the atmosphere, making them electrically charged, or ionized. Since opposite electrical charges attract each other, the positively charged ionized particles attract the negatively charged portion of water vapor, thus forming large droplets in the form of low-lying clouds.

In turn, the clouds cool the climate and trigger an ice age -- or so theorists suggest. [...]

Secret Sphere

“If we don't expand our analysis to what might be called the 'secret sphere,' we will continue to grope in the dark while believing everything is illuminated.” - Jack Z. Bratich (via Signs of the Times)

It is a breezy run through of history, and not the type you get in the history text books. It is pretty plain that modern wealth was consolidated via the drug and slave trades. Many of the secret societies arose due to the fact that discrete connections were needed for pirates and smugglers.

These families then leveraged their power by inbreeding, investing in or starting more “respectable” businesses such as banking and insurance and entering politics.

They kept their power and wealth which they passed on to their descendants. So we are stuck to this day with these inbred descendants who will do anything to continue what is required to maintain and increase that wealth and power. Greed is a sickness.

Our lives are considered only a means to an end, and that end is their wish and greed fulfillment. Mass movements are hijacked, and that energy is always utilized toward a carefully guided end that they want.

We live in an entropic realm, and that power has to be constantly guarded or it declines. Every bit of knowledge that we gain about their activities is a decline. Those in power are afraid of us.

The Fundamental Christian fervor was utilized to usher in an age of genocide and violence. Fanatics are willing to kill or to be killed for some future glory that they have been told is theirs to be had for just believing. The fanatic's frustration is a tool.

Now we see that the US economy is being ruined and dollars are being funneled into a few corporations. More frustration which equals more fuel for elite aims.

The only guard against furthering our own destruction is knowledge, and then to creatively disperse that knowledge to those interested.

Hope lies in the individual willing to risk their own comfort zone and to peer into the darkness reporting back what they see.